Modeling of Land Mobile Satellite Radio Propagation Channel

Buildings, trees, and terrain represent main local sources of propagation impairment in land mobile satellite (LMS) propagation. These elements interact with wave propagation through reflection, scattering and diffraction. Thus it is very important to characterize their effects on the radio channel. Accurate characterization is crucially needed to optimize system parameters such as power link budget, fading margin and hand-off algorithm. At mobile satellite frequencies roadside buildings can be assumed as conduction objects that significantly block the propagating signal. Even with existence of a direct path from the satellite to the mobile, the reflection and scattering processes lead to other viable wave paths. These multipath signals interfere with each other, leading to a rapid fading effect. Hence, building blockage is one of the most important problems for satellite mobile radio channels. This book developed a model to characterize the effect of building blockage on LMS channel. The model is used to measure the influence of building blockage in term of fading, inter-symbol interference, bit error rate and depolarization.